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The debate continues over remote work in higher education. Many professionals are ready to vote with their feet. According to survey data released earlier this year by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, staff and administrators are increasingly more likely to leave their jobs because they want the option to work remotely.
“There’s a significant disconnect between what employees are currently required to do in terms of their in-person experiences versus what they would prefer to do,” said Andy Brantley, CUPA-HR president and chief executive officer.
Contributing to the disconnect are three arguments that institutions make to justify on-campus work. The following statements aren’t universal, but the claims continue to become weaker as more knowledge work industries adopt flexible remote work policies:
1. Remote Work Will Hurt Productivity
Gallup chair and author Jim Clifton asked a Harvard professor what would happen if students were no longer required to physically attend class, just so they make good decisions. The professor said, “They would make one bad decision after another.”
Clifton shared Gallup survey data to support his argument that remote workers are less engaged and lack connection to the mission or purpose of the organization. This hurts productivity and contributes to mental health issues, including loneliness and depression.
Although Clifton acknowledged that mature professionals will make better decisions than college students, albeit Harvard students, there’s still an assumption that employee performance will lag if workers are given more slack in attendance policies.
That’s not the case, at least according to a recent report from Scoop, a hybrid work management startup. Based on a study of public companies that give employees a choice whether to come into an office, the analysts found that employees with options outperformed those under more restrictive policies. Productivity was measured on revenue growth over the past three years.
Gallup’s recommended solutions for hybrid work relies heavily on the manager’s performance: 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. Yes, it’s up to each manager to hold team members accountable, but employees will make better decisions if their manager trusts them to do the job.
Part of employees’ willingness to follow a leader is believing that they are being treated fairly, and fairness in the workplace is becoming redefined as more remote-capable employees are granted flexibility.
2. Remote Work is Unfair to Those Who Have to Work on Campus
Remote work policies are particularly difficult to implement on college campuses because institutions often have an all-or-nothing approach. If someone from housing or student affairs has to be here on campus, then everyone should, regardless of student interaction. Despite faculty and staff having different sets of expectations around work schedules, higher education seems slow to adapt.
“We often get stuck in an equality mindframe, when we should have an equity mindframe,” Brantley said. “It’s easier to have an equality mindframe where everybody’s here 8-to-5, Monday through Friday. My challenge to that is, ‘Let’s define why. Why is it important for every person to be required to be in an in-person environment? Particularly now, in a competitive environment (for recruiting talent), we have to be able to define why, other than, ‘It’s just our preference.'”
The equality mindframe means giving everyone the same tools, in this case a rigid schedule or parameters for completing the work, but equity has to do with results. The results of higher education and other knowledge work is not as easily defined or measured. If you can crank X-amount more widgets from home than on campus, then you can easily define why.
Having more data and better ways to measure productivity can prove the fairness of remote work, but also more ways to effectively collaborate remotely and allow for serendipitous interactions. The pandemic forced quicker adoption of videoconferencing to enhance remote work. A competitive job market might accelerate technology as well as people’s idea of fairness.
3. Remote Work is Bad for Culture
Culture is what people say distinguishes their workplace from others but it’s often difficult to define. The most common description is a set of shared values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterize an organization. Healthy cultures have clear expectations around how work gets done, why the work is important, and how people treat each other.
As more professionals move across organizations and industries, expectations are becoming more universal. As the CUPA-HR survey indicates, more people expect remote or hybrid work environments.
Other surveys, like one published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, show employers are embracing hybrid models. Almost two-thirds of administrative and academic leaders were part of hybrid workplaces and only 36% were fully in-person. Although the biggest challenge for a hybrid workplace is “connecting with peers” (72%), the Chronicle’s respondents indicated that institutions are getting better at managing hybrid work environments.
According to research by business professors Robert E. Quinn and Kim Cameron, there are no “good” or “bad” cultures, but rather four distinct types: clan culture, adhocracy culture, market culture, and hierarchy culture. Clan is highly collaborative, adhocracy is fast-moving and innovative, market is based on results, and hierarchy is based on roles and processes. None of these are dependent on face-to-face interaction, but some require synchronous communication that can be easily achieved with the right technology and directives by managers.
“There are some institutions that have embraced hybrid and remote models and have gone to great lengths to review positions and determine which positions can function fully in a remote or hybrid environment,” Brantley said. “Then there are some that have said, ‘Culture equals everyone being in person.’ Every institution is different. Every mission is really important for each institution across the country. We have to recognize that.”
In Conclusion
Asked if colleges and universities have chosen to embrace remote or hybrid work more in the last year (compared to the start of the pandemic when it was necessary), Brantley said, “It depends.” It depends on the roles and who can be most productive. It depends if remote work policies have an all-or-nothing approach. It depends on the types of institution and what model best serves their mission and goals.
If, however, institutions make choices that depend on the job market and expectation of employees, then remote and hybrid work models will continue to gain traction in higher education. And the skepticism about productivity, fairness, and culture will slip away.
